


Most Days

by smileanddoitanyway



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Future Fic, Hurt Stiles, M/M, Other, Potential trigger warning, Stiles-centric, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:44:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/706174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smileanddoitanyway/pseuds/smileanddoitanyway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most days, he does just fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Days

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd and a first draft, so please excuse any errors.

Most days, he does just fine. He gets up (the third time his alarm goes off), usually takes a shower, and grabs a bagel on the way out the door. He teaches Mythology and Folklore at UCLA now. His students think he’s a little eccentric, the way he talks about werewolves and faeries and witches like they’re indisputable fact, but his enthusiasm is as catching as it always has been. He grades midterm and final papers in front of the TV with a microwave dinner cooling and congealing at his elbow. He can hear the voice in his head that sounds like his dad bitching about double standards. He eats a lukewarm French fry to shut it up.

About once a week he’ll get a call from Scott, or they’ll Skype so he can stay in touch with his goddaughter. Why Scott and Allison thought naming their baby girl after him was a good idea will baffle him until his last breath. He usually just calls her “Munchkin” even though she’s eleven years old now, Uncle Stiles, and a munchkin is a little baby. He corrects her by sending a package of donut holes from a big chain across the street from the university. The next call she tells him that she ate more of them than even Uncle Derek could have, and she misses him a lot, does he think Uncle Derek misses her?

He’s usually in bed by ten every night, and awake by four thirty. Mrs. McCall told him a while ago she should be sleeping like an old fart, not him. He laughed and hugged her tight enough she complained about bruised ribs for the rest of the night. He hadn’t been back to Beacon Hills since then. It’d been his dad’s funeral.

Sometimes he feels guilty. Mostly he doesn’t think about it.

He knows this sort of isolation is not what anyone expected from him; knows its not really what he wants.

The first time it hits him is about six months after. It was the first time he was going to give a pop quiz and he was so nervous he spilled juice all over his shirt and tie- an honest-to-god tie!- and had about four seconds to change. Without even thinking about it, he grabbed a shirt out of the dresser and pulled it on. It wasn’t until he saw his reflection in one of the glass walls of the building that he realized the gray Henley wasn’t his.

All of the clothes and books and furniture and random crap people accumulate throughout their lives that didn’t belong to him were supposed to be in storage. He’d packed everything up himself 45 minutes after the knock on the door revealed two uniformed police officers with grim, uncomfortable expressions. “I must have missed a few things,” he thought with detachment. Only then his chest felt tight and his heartbeat thundered in his ears like a stampede of spooked horses. Or wildebeest. No, not wildebeest. Derek hated the Lion King. But Derek’s gone.

He used to have moments where he’d hear phantom growling outside the bedroom door. It usually happened when he was just about to fall asleep; that time where the line between a dream and the real world blurred. That was the worst because he could almost forget that there wasn’t a stubborn, six-foot mythical creature that secretly enjoyed the occasional belly scratch and Gone With the Wind stalking his way towards the bed. He could almost forget that there wouldn’t ever be again.

The only time he’d ever brought anyone back to their house, the other guy had ended up leaving with his pants around his knees and a curse on his lips. He had really thought he was ready to move on. But once he had a dick in his mouth and didn’t recognize it, or the voice moaning and gasping above him, he locked himself in their bedroom with an old white t-shirt that still smelled like musk and earth.

These days he can think about the pack without a lightning bolt of pain cracking apart his ribs. He can send Erica a happy birthday text and send Boyd a Valentine’s Day card full of over-used cliché’s that make him roll his eyes. He can meet Isaac for lunch every other Tuesday, except when he has too much grading to do and they have to postpone. Again.

But some days, he forgets about Derek’s overbite. He forgets if the swirls of his tattoo ran clockwise or counterclockwise. Some days, it doesn’t hurt to re-read their last text conversation or to realize that none of Derek's old clothes (that never did quite made it to storage) smell like him anymore.

Some days Scott has to make the two-hour trip to force him to shower and eat and remind him. Remind him of that time he and Derek had the Munchkin for the weekend, and she convinced Derek to play dress up- complete with princess dress and sparkly nail polish. Scott even keeps the picture on his phone. Or to remind him of how much Derek loved Brussels sprouts. Or how proud Derek was when he got his own degree in Wildlife Sciences.

Those days are the days his heart splinters, and he thinks maybe it should have been him. Maybe he could have stopped it. Maybe he could have done something sooner, faster, better. Maybe it is all his fault.

Some days he falls apart and hopes and plans and prays for the end. He cries and yells and screams at everything and nothing.

But most days, he does just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the sad. I'm feeling a little blue and needed to work some of it out.


End file.
